


Crisis

by houndsoflove



Category: Little Miss Sunshine
Genre: Implied Incest, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houndsoflove/pseuds/houndsoflove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short piece on questions that come late at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crisis

**Author's Note:**

> I love Little Miss Sunshine, and today I realised I'd forgotten all about this fic that I'd written just after watching it a couple of years ago, so I cleaned it up and decided to post!
> 
> This fic contains a suggestion of incestuous thoughts, but nothing blatant. There is also a description of an attempted suicide, so please be forewarned in case you find either of these themes upsetting.

Dwayne sometimes looks up briefly from _Also sprach Zarathustra_ and frowns at Frank, a question waiting on the brink, Frank can feel it; ultimately Dwayne appears to decide against voicing it, and returns to his text. Frank continues looking anyway, waiting, the college-ruled notepad on his knee staying obstinately fresh and free of note taking. After ten minutes or so Dwayne tunes in to the absence of pen scratching and Frank’s patient silence and glances up again.

Thinking about Dwayne hurts Frank. Looking at Dwayne hurts him. When Dwayne brushes his too-long hair from his forehead because it tickles his nose and makes him mad, Frank feels a warm bloom of affection. _Cute_ , he thinks. It’s the same when Dwayne stews at the dinner table, or gently pets Olive’s head when she gives him a hug. When she hugs you she’ll squeeze the air right out of your lungs, he says.

And now, with Dwayne staring at him in the wide, questioning way that young people do, Frank no longer feels the way he should. He’s sort of a little bit in love with Dwayne. In love with his mind. In love with his shut-in white skin and sad eyes, his bony fingers on dry pages and his sulky-sweet china-doll mouth.

‘Good night,’ Frank announces suddenly, placing his notepad on the floor with the pen set neatly on top. He rolls over, cocooning himself, and goes still, facing the wall. Uncertain minutes pass and Frank feigns sleep with his eyes closed even though he knows Dwayne can’t see him for blankets. He hears Nietzsche being placed reverently face-down on the bedside table, then the _click-click_ of the lamp cord. The room is plunged into darkness.

‘Frank,’ says Dwayne, his half-whisper slipping through the onset of drowsy black silence. Frank decides to pretend some more.

‘Frank. Frank.’ A pause. ‘Frank.’

‘I’m asleep, Dwayne.’

There’s a screech of busted mattress springs, then the light thumping of footsteps on the floor.

‘Frank,’ Dwayne hisses, right next to Frank’s ear. ‘Let me in.’

‘What?’

‘Let me in,’ Dwayne reiterates, yanking at the corner of Frank’s sheets.

Without a _why_ or a _what the hell_ , Frank lifts the blanket and Dwayne climbs right on under. There’s a clash of knees and cold feet and skinny arms before everything settles. Frank’s back is smashed awkwardly up against the wall, the futon from the attic too narrow for the both of them.

It all makes sense at twenty-four minutes past two in the morning, in the corner shadows of Dwayne’s bedroom. Dwayne murmurs questions about killing yourself at Frank beneath the cave of blankets, his words muffled.

Frank’s wrists were free of bandages now, the purple lines and skin in shining bunches the only evidence of cut and stitch. His death was an unceremonious one, or would have been; he’d simply numbed his pulse with a bag of frozen peas and then took a clean blade with unfeeling fingers from the soap dish. He was found by a concerned friend at the vital moment, spotted through the bathroom window face down on the floor with his head jammed somewhere behind the lavatory u-bend, three-day-old pyjamas soaked and glistening with blood. Between then and now was a sick blur; life boiled down to sterile spaces and open-backed gowns and a soft woman with an easy chair who made him watch her pen move back and forth between his eyes. It’s during this that Dwayne is calmly informing him in a low voice that if he were to take his own life he would throw himself into the sea; it’s against the sheer size and openness of the sea you feel the most insignificant, and, when it comes down to it, drowning seems like the least effort; it’s then that Frank cries like an ass into Dwayne’s _Jesus Was Wrong_ shirt, and Dwayne shuts up and breathes out slowly through his nose and pats Frank gingerly on the shoulder.


End file.
